More of the Same?

Iran’s presidential election is full of such strange and even bizarre results that it’s rather hard to decipher its meaning. The full picture will have to await the June 24 run-off vote but so far the outcome’s most significant aspects include:

–A high turnout. Despite reformist calls for a boycott and a seeming discontent with all Iran’s political forces, 62 percent of the voters reportedly turned out. This would seem a sign of support for the regime since Iran’s current rulers set the election in those terms. The election was held under stricter rules to ensure that no liberal succeeded President Muhammad Khatami, a reformer finishing his two-term limit and whose efforts were completely blocked by hardliners.

–A weaker-than-expected showing by the political ‘center.’ While 70-year-old former president Hashemi Rafsanjani was expected to come in first by a big margin he barely pulled away from the pack with 21 percent to qualify for the June 24 run-off election. Rafsanjani was president from 1989 to 1997. He is a complex figure whose background is very much aligned with the ruling establishment but who puts more emphasis on a pragmatic economic and foreign policy.

–A strong showing for hardliners. The youthful, 49-year-old Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (his reformist predecessor was thrown in jail), unexpectedly beat out the other main hardliner candidate with 19.5 percent to win a place in the run-off against Rafsanjani in the next round. He is the regime’s favorite and it is possible that he received extra help in a corrupted vote count to gain that spot. Together the hardliners got about 39 percent of the vote.

–The reformists did poorly. The two reformist candidates split that sector’s vote and knocked each other out of the race. Yet they were close enough to Ahmadinejad to suggest that perhaps they were cheated out of second place. The reformists’ pre-election campaign for a boycott of the election, given the crackdown on giving them a fair chance, failed in two respects. Many people still voted and those staying at home prevented a reformist from getting into the run-off. While the total pro-reformist vote was almost equal to the hardliner tally, this was a big decline from their past performance.

What does a choice between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani mean? The reformists understandably view Rafsanjani as the lesser of two evils and will support him. Essentially, he represents the status quo plus two important changes: economic reforms to help business prosper and a foreign policy more focused on staying out of trouble.

On the economic front, Iran is in serious trouble despite the inflow of billions of dollars due to higher oil prices in recent years. There are not enough jobs for the country’s rapidly increasing population. Government interference and rampant corruption have been very damaging. Foreign investment has been discouraged in large part by Iran’s extremist foreign policy. Rafsanjani is in no way a liberal reformer, but from an Iranian perspective he could be seen as offering a better life with less harassment from militant Islamism.

That does not mean, of course, that he could deliver on these promises. His two terms in office were not full of accomplishments but he did manage to keep the country out of major trouble. Rafsanjani is a leading part of the group that has profited greatly by economic manipulation and what might even be called looting Iran’s assets. As for the international scene, Rafsanjani would not interfere with Iran carrying out the same policy as it has done for years: sponsoring terrorism, subverting regional peace and stability in Iraq, advocating what amounts to genocidal threats against Israel, and an effort to get nuclear weapons. To a large extent, this means he would not try to stop–and perhaps could not do so even if he wanted to–the hardliners from going about their business. He might, however, restrain all these tendencies from going too far, too fast and leading to a confrontation with the United States.

First and foremost, Rafsanjani wants to reduce the visibility of radical activities to a point low enough to give Europe a chance to ignore them. One of his main goals would be to obtain an end to pressure on Iran about its drive to get nuclear weapons and to obtain European investment. In short, Rafsanjani represents a mixture between minimal tactical moderation and a good public relations’ campaign.

Ahmadinejad is much more the unalloyed hardliner. If he were to become president, he would be far more adventurist. Lacking any foreign policy experience whatsoever, he would be more likely to give the extremists a free hand. Still, Iran’s president is in effect subordinate to a range of other institutions, including the supreme guide and Council of Guardians. Ahmadinejad would not quite be an Iranian version of Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad–a young, inexperienced leader whose militant policies are getting his country into very deep trouble–but the parallel does spring to mind.

Iran’s alternatives, then, are not between a dictatorial regime and a moderate but rather between the tougher and softer wings of the Islamist forces. For Iranian liberals, the choice is a clear one. The rest of the world, however, should not overestimate Rafsanjani’s moderation or use him as an excuse to ignore Iran’s very dangerous activities. At most, it can be said that he does not represent something worse than the current situation, which of course is already bad enough.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, will be published by Wiley in September. Prof. Rubin’s columns can now be read online at http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html.

About Barry Rubin

Prof. Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist for PajamasMedia at http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan)

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